The following article by Joe Conason was posted on the creators.com website August 8, 2018:
The political movement swirling around President Donald Trump — formerly known as the Republican Party — displays certain unique features but is really just the latest noxious excrescence of the American right. Like so many of its predecessors, the Trump movement is built on fear. And like every movement motivated by paranoia, its followers are mentally vulnerable to the most idiotic conspiracy theories.
Not surprisingly, since everything about Trump is always the “biggest” and the “best,” his fans are flocking to a truly enormous and enormously deluded conspiracy known as QAnon, or simply, “Q.”
Insofar as any sane reporter can determine, Q is an entity that delivers anonymous messages via internet chat boards (the same virtual locations that generally attract obsessive right-wing types who carry out harassment campaigns from their mothers’ basements). Supposedly sent by some person or persons in the upper reaches of the federal government with ultra-secret security clearances, the Q “drops” assure us that Trump is actually dismantling the “deep state” and elite international pedophilia cults, both controlled by various liberal politicians and celebrities. Already, Q has reported the arrest of Hillary Clinton (which never happened).